Senate passes government’s assisted dying bill

Canada now has a federal legislative framework for medically assisted dying.

Bill C-14, the Trudeau government’s medical assistance in dying legislation, received Royal Assent Friday after a tumultuous time passing through Parliament.

Senators voted 44 to 28 in favour of passing it after shooting down a last-ditch effort Friday to amend the controversial legislation, ending a bicameral showdown over the bill.

Parliament’s two houses had been at odds over the phrase in the government’s bill that restricts eligibility for a medically assisted death to those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

The Senate removed the phrase, but the House sent it back to the Senate Thursday with the phrase put back in, although the Commons accepted some smaller amendments. Rather than insist on the point and send it back again, the Senate opted to accede to the will of the Commons, allowing the House of Commons to adjourn for the summer.

The parliamentary flash point was over whether the phrase makes the law unconstitutional by limiting access to just the terminally ill, and whether it falls short of the spirit of the Supreme Court’s Carter ruling – the landmark case that struck down the provision in the criminal code preventing assisted suicide.

Conservative Senator Claude Carignan said he has mixed feelings about it passing.

On one hand, he said, it’s “a positive thing for those at the end of life, that the rules will be clear.”

“But the other side, a group of people will not have those rights and those rights were recognized in the Supreme Court ruling by Carter.”

Independent Senator André Pratte said earlier in the day he was concerned about an Ontario court ruling this week that said patients must still get judicial approval while there is no federal law in place, leading him to support Senator Peter Harder’s motion to pass the bill.

“In the end,” he said, “although it saddens me greatly for the patients I am letting down, I have decided to vote for Sen. Harder’s motion.”

Liberal Senator George Baker, the bill’s sponsor, said he was glad to see it finally pass through the Senate.

“This is a good law. It stretches things out to the point where we trust our physicians to make the right decisions on a case by case basis.”

Baker then said for those unhappy with the law’s limit, they should blame the House of Commons.

“Don’t blame the Senate. If you’re unhappy, you turn your unhappiness to the House of Commons, who overwhelmingly rejected an amendment by the Senate [Thursday].”

Earlier Friday, Liberal Senator Serge Joyal tried once again to change the most contentious part of the bill.

He put an amendment forward that would have suspend a controversial phrase in the bill until the government gets a reference from the Supreme Court over the matter. Senators earlier Friday voted 42 to 28 against

Joyal launched into an emotional plea for Senators to stand up for minority rights by supporting his amendment, and pointed to Japanese internment during WWII, and the Immigration Act, which stripped “Jews from access to the country.”

“So think about that – the elected majority.”

“Your responsibility is to stand for the minorities…and if we don’t stand for minorities, honourable Senators, look at the way the demography of this country is evolving.”

“We are a country of minorities,” he said, his voice wavering.

Conservative Senator Denis Patterson said it was unfortunate Joyal’s amendment was submitted “at the 11th hour,” and said the Senate should “only challenge the [House of Commons] in very exceptional circumstances.”

Independent Senator Murray Sinclair, meanwhile, took issue with the idea that the phrase “reasonably foreseeable” had anything to do with whether an illness is terminal.

“That is not what it means at all,” he said. “From a legal perspective, reasonable foreseeability is a very definable provision and it does not mean imminent. It does not mean soon.”

Sinclair also clashed against the amendment saying that the government should “do it the other way,” by limiting access “until the court otherwise rules.”

“And that’s likely to going to happen anyway,” he continued.

On matters that strike to the core of the sanctity of life and on ending it, he said it is “for the government to decide if they want to move incrementally.”

Liberal Senator James Cowan chided Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould for recommending against the content of the Senate’s earlier controversial amendments before they were even made.

“I sincerely hope this is not the attitude of this government toward our work in other matters,” he said.

Cowan then read out two heart-wrenching emails from a batch he received from Canadians, one he received yesterday from a woman in Southwestern Ontario with a degenerative disease that will eventually lead to her death by asphyxiation.

In the email she said she will wait for the law to come into force, but then “starve and dehydrate” herself so her death becomes “reasonably foreseeable.”